Book 2: Discerning and Discovering The Meaning of Holy Scripture
Part 1: Discerning the Meaning of Scripture
Treatise 1: The Meaning of Scripture in General
Section 1: Thesis Concerning the Meaning of Scripture in General
Section 2
Assessing the Opinions of Others
Among those whose views and opinions are to be weighed in the scales of truth are (1) Pontifical writers. (2) Some Church Fathers of the ancient world. (3) Jewish Rabbis.
Article 1.
The Opinion of Pontifical writers
The Pontifical writers, we argue, are in the wrong concerning their doctrine on the meaning of Scripture: (1) with respect to their opinion itself, and (2) with respect to the end and goal of their opinion.
The Errors of the Pontifical Writers
1. First we believe they go wrong:
In their indiscriminately assigning various meanings to Scripture.
Bellarmine (De Verbo Dei book 3, ch. 3) at first makes a distinction between the literal or historic meaning and the spiritual or mystical meaning. Not bad so far, if he is rightly understood. Later he defines and divides the literal meaning and that is not bad either. Afterwards he divides the spiritual meaning into allegorical, tropological and anagogical categories. He calls it allegorical when the words of Scripture, apart from the literal meaning, signify something in the New Testament that pertains to Christ or the Church, as in Galatians 4:22. He calls it tropological when the words or deeds are applied to signify something pertaining to morals, as in 1 Corinthians 9:9. He calls it anagogical when the words or deeds are applied to signify eternal life, as in Hebrews 4:3.
Thomas in his Commentary on Galatians (4, sect. 6) gives this example: “With the words, ‘let there be light’, what I am saying literally concerning corporal light pertains to the literal meaning. If we were to understand ‘let there be light’ as ‘let Christ be born in the Church’, it pertains to the allegorical meaning. But if we were to say ‘let there be light’, meaning, ‘so that through Christ we may be brought to glory’, it pertains to the anagogical meaning. If, however, we should say ‘let there be light’, meaning, ‘let us be kindled in our affection’, it pertains to the moral meaning.”
We read similar things in the work of Nicholas of Lyra (in prol. Bibl.), Sixtus of Sienna (Biblioth. sanct. book 3, p.138 et sq.), Salmeron (proleg. 7), Cornelius a Lapide (in encomio Scripturae, praefixo commentario in Pentat.) and Becanus (Theol. scholast. part. 2. tom. 2. tract. 1. c.3. q.3.).
Christopher Gillius S.J. (Commentationes Theologicae de Essentia et Unitate Dei, book 1, tr. 7 ch. 3. num. 10.) summarizes the integrity and variability of this division as follows: “The truth, which the divine letters hand down to us through figurative language, is ordered so that we rightly behave or rightly believe. If it is so that we rightly behave, it is the moral or tropological meaning, but if it is so that we rightly believe, then we need to distinguish what we should believe. For as the author Dionysius writes (De coelesti hierarchia, ch. 4), The state of the Church today is somewhere between the state of the Synagogue and the Church triumphant, and for that reason the Old Testament was a figure for the New, but each of them are a figure of the beatific state. And so when the mystical meaning is marshalled for our believing and founded in the prefiguring of the New Testament through the Old, we call it allegorical. But in so far as it is founded in that kind of prefiguring by which the Old and New Testaments are a type of the Church triumphant, we call it anagogical.”
So he says. Elsewhere the couplet concerning this distinction of meanings is well known:
Letter teaches deeds, what to believe does allegory,
Moral what to do, and where to go does anagogy.
But to say nothing of the incorrectness of the terminology (anagogy means ‘lifting up’ or ‘elevation’. For anagogy properly denotes ‘failure of education’, according to Budaeus, and likewise ‘prodigal life’, and ‘restless spirit of a youth’, from the Greek word for intractable, insolent and loose living), we offer the following caveats:
It is incorrect for us to contrast tropology and anagogy with allegory, since they are species of it. For certainly in 1 Corinthians 9:9 and Hebrews 4:3 the Apostle’s treatment is, properly and accurately speaking, allegorical. Only the subjects are different, and the material about which he is speaking in each case. But if we are looking for a difference between allegory, tropology and anagogy because of the material, why do we not likewise make another category for that spiritual sense that treats of the Church militant, of Christ, of Baptism, etc.?
Allegories that are shown in Scripture itself get badly confused with allegories that are imported by interpreters. Bellarmine, for instance, presents examples of Scripture to prove his own opinion, but in the course of his argument he clearly mixes in-written and unwritten allegories into one pot. Thus (in ch. 3, §.7), in order to prove that the spiritual meaning is found also in the New Testament, he presents Augustine, who in Treatise 122 on John allegorically explains the catch of fish, when the net began to tear in Luke 5, but anagogically explains the catch when the net was not torn in John 21. And similarly in Treatise 124 on John he explains allegorically what was said to Peter (“follow me”) and anagogically what was said concerning John (“if I wish him to remain”) etc.
Dr. Gillius in the account of Christ’s entrance into the holy city on a donkey attaches to it this mystical meaning, saying, “Chrysostom attaches a moral lesson to Matthew 21 when he says that by that deed Christ left for us a rule that we should not ask for more than necessity requires. Jerome touches upon the allegorical meaning when he says that the Apostles’ act of placing their clothes on the ass for Christ to sit there signifies that the soul needs the Apostolic teachings, so that Christ may sit on it. Finally, the same Jerome, Remigius and others present an anagogical meaning when they say that Christ’s entrance into the earthly Jerusalem was a figure of his introit into the heavenly Jerusalem.”
The Jesuits say these things, and thereby go as far as possible from our position as we explained it above. For when we affirm a twofold meaning of Scripture, we understand only those Scriptural texts where Scripture itself indicates that they contain a mystical meaning apart from the literal meaning. Concerning any and all allegories of the Church Fathers, however (as Bellarmine affirms in d.l. §.8), even when they construct them in agreement with the faith and good morals, we still cannot be certain that they were intended by the Holy Spirit. And so we are by no means to hold on to them as if they were the very meaning of Scripture (as the Pontifical writers would have it) but only as different applications to varying circumstances. If these applications are agreeable and conform to the rule of faith, I wish everyone would accept them as useful! But if they are contrived and strange, we reject them.
2. Second they go wrong:
In attributing multiple literal meanings to the same passage of Scripture.
And we especially find fault among the Pontifical writers for this. For we will prove below in a special declaration that there is only one literal meaning of any given passage. The Romanists, however, as they introduce a variety of literal meanings, are busily destroying however much clarity and certainty the Scripture passage contains.
As we are discussing the opinion of Pontifical writers concerning this matter, we also want to present what foundation and reasons they give for establishing their opinion.
1. Bellarmine in De Verbo Dei (book 3, ch. 3. §.2) approves of this statement, “Scripture has God for its author. Therefore it is its proper character to contain two meanings, the literal or historic, and the spiritual or mystical.” But this logic is not worth much, as Natali Conti’s Mythologies make clear, and Palaephatus’ Peri Apiston, that is, the book about histories that should not be believed, and Sabinus’ Commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and others who allegorize myths. For those mythologies contain two meanings, as the Pontifical writers also admit, and yet they by no means come from God through that direct inspiration that we attribute to the Scriptures.
If the argument is sound, then it will be permissible to argue from the whole to the parts, which are just like the whole, like this: “Every little part of Scripture and any given passage has God as its author; therefore a twofold meaning, the literal and mystical, will be present in every passage,” but Bellarmine himself does not concede this conclusion; for he says in De Verbo Dei (book 3, ch. 3, §.8), “The spiritual meaning is not found in every sentence in Scripture, neither in the Old Testament, nor in the New. For that passage: you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, in Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22 and similar commandments only have one meaning, that is, the literal”, and so on.
2. Cornelius a Lapide, after explaining his opinion concerning the different meanings of Scripture, adds in exclamation, “See here the fertility of holy Scripture!” From the “fertility,” therefore, that he attributes to the written word of God in Isaiah 55:10-11, he tries by deductive reasoning to prove multiple meanings, among other things. Indeed, it is called fertile (1) essentially and for its own sake, because it is a freely flowing wellspring of divine wisdom, brimming with a great many mysteries, beyond our understanding, surpassing all comprehension. (2) actively and because of us, since when it is properly treated, understood and written by the finger of God on the tablets of hearts, it produces a hundredfold fruit unto eternal life (Matthew 13:18 and Isaiah 56:10-11). Then it is called an incorruptible seed, since by it we are reborn (1 Peter 1:23). It is called an implanted or ingrafted word, in that it can save our souls (James 1:21). It is not, however, to be denied that this also logically pertains to the fertility of Scripture, the fact that, apart from the literal meaning, it often has a mystical meaning buried within it, which – while the Scripture passage itself comes first – can and should be dug out from that passage or from that fertile goldmine.
3. Cornelius, in the work just cited, gathers this from 1 Samuel 20:20, “Just as Jonathan, to give the signal to David to flee, shot an arrow as they had agreed and told the boy to go beyond to collect it, and in doing so signified two things, first and most immediately, that the boy should pick up the arrow, second and more remotely that David should flee, so in the Scriptures it is this way, that the literal meaning is given most immediately, and the Holy Spirit signifies the mystical meaning more remotely.” But this simile hardly fits well to the thesis at hand, since the words of Jonathan do not have a double meaning, the one being most immediate but the other more remote, but a single uniform meaning. Jonathan’s action and his command to go beyond revealed Saul’s intent to David, according to their agreement. Ordinarily, that action and command meant nothing to him. But if anyone really wants to use this simile as a rough approximation of this thing, that is fine by us.
The End and Goal of the Pontifical Writers
The second part of this section is the end and goal of the opinion of the Pontifical writers. This I find to be twofold, and each of them is bad and completely perverse.
(1) They desperately want to prove their pseudo-hypothesis concerning the obscurity of holy Scripture.
Bellarmine in De Verbo Dei (book 3, ch. 9) writes, “Scripture receives different meanings, and it does not say which is true.” From this he concludes, “Therefore it is obscure and cannot be its own judge.”
Becanus writes the same way in question 8 (d.l.), where he includes among the causes of the obscurity of Scripture this reason: “One thing is often the figure or type of another thing that is signified through it.” For this reason, he says, “a treble obscurity arises: (1) because it is not immediately obvious what thing is a figure of what other thing; (2) because one thing is sometimes a figure of different things, sometimes even of contradictory things; (3) because sometimes something that is a figure for another thing represents it in one passage and in another passage is completely different.” He illustrates all of this with examples.
But we say in response: (1) It is not surprising that the reason for the obscurity of Scripture originated with the Pontifical writers, and that it is not immediately clear to them what “thing is a figure of what other thing,” since they are not content with the inwritten mystical meaning, which is explained in the Scriptures themselves, but they busily wait upon the their interpreters’ types, which are invented with unique boldness and imported to the text. For in this way, that “Jonah was a type not only of Christ, but also of the Jews who were opposed to Christ,” from Augustine’s Letter 49 (q.6), Becanus asserts (in the same work), “For just as Jonah was saddened because of the repentance of the Ninevites in Jonah 4:1, so did the Jews afterwards grieve because of the calling of the gentiles.” But this type is imported into Scripture and in no way drawn and born from Scripture, which does not indicate this typical meaning anywhere. (2) The possibility that any obscurity in the holy Scriptures follows from this reason is so far removed, that rather its clarity and perspicuity also consist in this, that when the Holy Spirit in any place intends some mystical meaning, he elsewhere reveals and explains it either explicitly or implicitly (in either case clearly and perspicuously), only let us follow the Savior’s command and search the Scriptures (Jn. 5:39), and with unremitting fear of the Lord let us look in them for Christ, as its sweetest core. And so this is the first goal of the Pontifical writers.
(2) On the foundation of this opinion, they try to construct their doctrine concerning the judge of controversies.
This is Bellarmine’s discursus (De Verbo Dei, III.3): “Because Scripture is capable of multiple meanings, it stands in need of an interpretation. This should come forth from that Spirit by which the Scriptures were made (2 Peter 1). This Spirit is only (but certainly) found in the Church, that is, in the Council of Bishops when it is confirmed by the highest pastor of the whole Church, or in the highest pastor with the council of other pastors.”
Actually, we willingly grant the first two points—that Scripture needs an interpretation and that this interpretation should come from the Holy Spirit himself, who speaks in the Scriptures, according to 2 Peter 1:20. No, rather we insist on them and fight for them! In this way we assert that this last point is patched on like a sorry-looking tail and that the logic here is absurd and impious, no – even more, that from the first two points, the falsehood of the last makes itself perfectly clear, as elsewhere the section for proving these things will demonstrate at greater length.
Article 2
The Opinion of Church Fathers.
We can hardly criticize the enthusiasm of pious antiquity, with which they rise in their interpretation of Scripture from the literal, historical meaning to the mystical meaning. At the same time, however, we cannot agree with them in every case, both because of their excess in this practice, and because of their use of invalid arguments.
1. Too Much Excess
We perceive this in Origen, who indeed seems to acknowledge a threefold meaning of Scripture (in hom. 2 on Genesis), the “historical, allegorical and tropological.” He writes, “If you make an ark, if you collect a library from the sermons of the prophets and apostles, or of those who followed them in the straight lines of faith, put two or three roofs over it; from it learn the historical narratives; from it learn the great mystery that is fulfilled in Christ and the Church; from it understand also that you must change your ways, prune back your vices, cleanse your soul, and strip it of every chain of captivity,” and so on.
Meanwhile, however, the literal and historic meaning is always lost, and the allegorical and spiritual meaning gets too much attention, as Jerome in his letter to Pammachius rightly complains about him: “He allegorizes in such a way as to remove the truth of the historical account.”
Augustine also seems to suffer from a certain measure of excess, when in De Genesi ad litteram (book 1, ch. 1) he argues from 1 Corinthians 10:11, “In the narrative of historical events, it is asked whether we should accept everything only according to the figurative understanding, or whether we should affirm and defend everything with confidence in the historical events. For no Christian would dare to say that not everything should be taken figuratively, who attends to the apostle’s words, But all these things happened to them as a figure,” etc.
Jerome says in his letter to Hedibrius (150), “In my opinion, the description and rule of the Scriptures is threefold: first, that we understand the Scriptures according to the historical account; second, according to the tropological meaning, third according to its spiritual understanding. In the historical account of those things that were written, an order is preserved. In tropology we rise from the letter and up to greater things, and whatever happened formerly to the people according to the flesh, we interpret according to a moral lesson and we turn it to the advantage of our soul. In spiritual contemplation we cross over to higher things, we let go of worldly things, we discuss the heavens and the blessedness of future things, so that the meditation of this life is a shadow of future blessedness.” Bellarmine says (De Verbo Dei, book 3, ch. 3) that Jerome in this place understands by the term “tropological meaning” also the allegorical, and conversely (in ch. 4) that Amos by the term “allegorical” also includes the tropological.
Gregory writes (Moralia in Job 16, ch. 9), “To abound in delicacies over the Almighty is to be satisfied in his love by the feast of holy Scripture. Indeed, we find in its words as many delicacies as we receive different understandings, for our benefit. So to begin, the bare history nourishes us; then the moral allegory, veiled beneath the literal text, renews us on the inside;l then contemplation lifts us up to higher things as it shines down from the light of eternity and into the darkness of this life.”
Augustine gives us a slightly different method of interpreting Scripture. For he states (De utilitate credendi, ch. 3) that Scripture has a fourfold meaning: (1) According to the history, that is, when it teaches what was written or what took place, and what did not take place, but was only written as if it took place. (2) According to aetiology, when it shows for what reason something was said or done. (3) According to analogy, when it points out the parts of each Testament that fit together. (4) According to allegory, when it teaches that the things that are written are not to be taken literally, but understood figuratively. He subdivides this allegory (De vera religione, ch. 50), into allegory of history, allegory of deed, allegory of speech and allegory of Sacrament.
Concerning the opinion of the Church Fathers we should note:
(1) Some have better opinions than others in this matter, as is clear from the collection of quotations. Jerome in his Commentary on Isaiah (13) rightly says, “We say these things not because we condemn the tropological understanding, but because the spiritual interpretation ought to follow after the historical account. Because some ignorant people make serious errors as they wander through the Scriptures.”
(2) When they mention the mystical and allegorical meanings, they understand not only those allegories that are explained in the Scriptures, but also those that they themselves construct on top of the literal meaning, apart from the explanation of Scripture. But whenever they do that, they are fairly negligent and lukewarm in discovering the literal meaning.
(3) And nor do they posit a historical, allegorical, tropological and anagogical meaning of Scripture for the end that they might make the Scriptures guilty of some kind of obscurity (the Papists do this), but the same authors whom we quoted above beautifully approve of their perspicuity (even when it comes to uneducated people).
Origen writes on Matthew 4, “The Scriptures are the fount of Jacob. If indeed the educated drink in the Scriptures, such as Jacob and his sons, the simple-minded and unrefined, like his flocks, also do so.” The same author writes, “Plato and the wise men of Greece are like those physicians who are on the look out for ever more sumptuous property, while the greater part of the common people go neglected. The prophets of the Jews, however, and the disciples of Christ, who bid farewell to human wisdom, prepare very wholesome meals, and they employ that way of speaking and that kind of equipment that is most useful for catching uneducated folks.”
Augustine writes in De Doctrina Christiana (book 2, ch. 6), “The Holy Spirit arranged the holy Scriptures so magnificently and salutarily that it satisfies one’s hunger by the more transparent passages, but by the more obscure passages it keeps you wanting more. For almost nothing is unearthed from those more obscure passages that is not most clearly expressed elsewhere.” The same author in book of his work against the Donatists (ch. 6) writes, “There is no obscurity in the Scriptures, but if you knock on the door of the Scriptures with the hand of your mind, little by little the words will begin to make better sense, and the Word of God itself will open up to you, because Jesus alone revealed the mysteries of the law in his Gospel.”
Gregory the Great says, “Scripture is a river, in which an elephant can swim and a lamb can walk.”
(4) They care much less about what the Pontifical writers propose, namely, that they defer the interpretation of Scriptures to the Roman Pontiff on his own or jointly with the council of other pastors. But rather, they earnestly fight against this foreign teaching. Let us listen to two testimonies to this effect. Gregory the Great, himself a Roman Pope, says in his Moralia (book 18, ch. 4), “Whoever wishes to speak the truth should take what he says from the holy writings, and everything that he says will call upon the foundation of divine authority.”
Augustine, arguing against the Pelagians, on the specific issue of faith and for the necessity of God’s grace, says as follows (De gratia et de libero arbitrio, ch. 18), “This case needs a judge, and who will the judge be? The apostle will judge, because Christ speaks in the apostle”, and so on. Compare what the same author says on Psalm 23.
We have considered the opinion of some Church Fathers, who to support their opinion sometimes make use of:
2. Invalid Arguments
These I will briefly explain.
(1) Augustine in De Genesi ad Litteram (book 1, ch. 1), and following him also Bellarmine in De Verbo Dei (book 3, ch. 3, §.2), and Becanus in part 2 of his Scholastic Theology (tom. 2, tr. 1. ch. 3, q. 3), to prove a twofold meaning of Scripture, cite the saying from 1 Corinthians 10:6 “These things, however, happened as a figure for us”, and verse 11, “All these things, however, happened to them as a figure.”
But actually: (1) From that passage we can only teach that Paul applies the ancient history to the Corinthians and teaches that those things that happened to the ancients are types, that is, images and pictures, so that they can see in them what to avoid and what to imitate, and likewise how God is disposed toward sinners. Luther, at the end of a sermon on the Ten Lepers, says, “Paul is not talking about figures but about examples. For he is encouraging us to walk in the fear of God so that nothing bad like that happens to us.” (2) The words of verse 6, “these things happened as types for us,” are explained by verse 11, where the examples of the ancient Israelites are said to have been written for us as a warning and a caution, to prevent us, as it says in verse 6, from becoming “desirous of evil things” and so on. Now the Greek for “warning” is actually not a mystical meaning, but an application of the meaning of Scripture, for a use, as is clear from 2 Timothy 3:16, where he explains a fourfold use of Scripture and includes “education,” that is, “training in righteousness,” which is one and the same thing as a warning.
(2) Jerome presents testimony from Solomon in Proverbs 22:20 (Letter to Hedibrius), saying, “We are commanded, by Solomon, who says, ‘You, however, write them down three times, in prudence and knowledge, so that you may reply the word of truth to those who put you forth.’ ”
Afterwards he adds those words I quoted earlier about the triple meaning and understanding of the Scriptures. But actually, here Jerome departs from both the words and the intent of what Solomon said. Certainly he departs from the words: (1) Because Solomon is not telling us what not to do when we interpret Scripture, but he is asserting and telling us what he himself did. For he asks “Did I not write down for you”, and so on; and (2) Jerome translates one Hebrew word as ‘three times’, just as in the Targum it reads ‘in three turns’, but a study of this word shows that we should give the translation, “Surely I wrote for you great things in counsels and knowledge” or with the same meaning, “Surely I wrote for you the words of leaders or princes,” that is, the most preeminent documents in terms of their counsels and knowledge, that is, documents that can benefit you in giving advice and that can make you prudent and wise. For the Hebrew word is plural (only a slight vowel change distinguishes it from the word that means ‘thirty’), from a word that in the singular means ‘great leader’, or ‘prince’, properly, ‘third from the king’, and it gets used in metaphor for anything that consists of an outstanding degree of dignity. And from these things it is also clear that Jerome’s interpretation is removed from the intent and true meaning of the wise king, since that passage is not talking about how we should embellish our exposition of the Scriptures, but it is commending the Proverbs of Solomon that come down to us in that book.
(3) Jerome in the same work presents testimony from 1 Thessalonians 5:23, saying, “Those whom Christ finds in such a state, that they are preserved unblemished in body and soul and spirit, and have the perfect truth of the threefold knowledge within themselves,” (the threefold meaning of Scripture) “these will he sanctify in his peace and make them to be perfect.” But here too, a comparison of the apostle’s words makes it sufficiently clear just how much he is departing from the apostle’s intent and his context, and we need not add anything further.
Article 3
The Opinions of the Rabbis
The Hebrew teachers, whom they call Rabbis, conduct themselves quite boldly, and especially those who go by the name of Cabbalists, on account of the persuasion of their esoteric wisdom, and of their method of interpreting the Scriptures (which they claim to have received by hand from Moses).
Indeed, they correctly posit a twofold meaning of Scripture, the literal and hidden or mystical meaning, as is clear from the old saying of theirs, which we quoted in the beginning of this book.
Less correctly, however:
(1) They think that the mystical and Cabbalistic meaning of Scripture from the Holy Spirit himself is whatever their own brains supply, which is often supersitious, even more often petty and frivolous, and most often useless. Indeed, they think that they come in any kind of vision in their dreams at night.
Petrus Cunaeus writes (Hebrew Republic, book 3, ch. 3.), “Most [Jews] who interpret the Law among themselves are incompetent, stuck up professors, who patch over their false teachings with other false teachings, to preserve themselves from ruin; and for a hefty fee they teach their students this one lesson: to know nothing. Those who make the most students similar to themselves, that is, pedantic wafflers, hold the highest chairs and with a full measure of insolence they call themselves ‘teachers of the law’ in Hebrew, as if you speak like a barbarian. They make out that the law reclines, that is, it rests among them and has its seat only among the Jewish people.”
He adds in the same place, “There is, however, a more reasonable faction among them, called the Karaite. They spurn the opinions of men and think of the Thalmudic precepts as mere triflings, and they allow for nothing but the context of the holy book. But that class of men is most hated by the other Jews,” and so on.
(2) They put the mystical meaning (and indeed, they themselves import this into the Scriptures) a long distance before the literal meaning. In Hebrew, they call the literal meaning a ‘little thing’ but the spiritual meaning a ‘big thing’. They liken the one to a candle that shines with the tiniest portion of light, but the other to a pearl that lies hidden in the unseen threshold, and those who look for it use this candle, that is, the literal meaning, and at long last they find it.
In Proverbs 25:11 we read these words, “Like golden apples in silver bags is a word spoken according to both its appearances.” (Silver bags are silver nets, in which the gaps are very small, but still able to be seen through.) They say that this passage has this mystical meaning, “That the word spoken according to both its appearances, that is, according to the inner and outer meaning, it is like golden apples in a silver net, and that the outer meaning is certainly precious and good like silver, but the inner meaning is much better, like gold, if it is compared with silver.” Compare Weidn (in loc. fid. Christ. tract. 1, p. 73) and Salmeron (t.I. proleg. 7, p. 69).
(3) They work too hard to multiply the mystical and Cabbalistic meaning. Some among the Rabbis themselves teach that they have seventy ways of explaining the Law.
Aben-Ezra in his metrical preface to the Pentateuch, near the end, writes, “For seventy” (not seven, as Munster is said to assert from this author) “are the ways” (of interpreting the Law or Scripture). Perhaps this is also the reason why they do not allow pointings to be written in their biblical manuscripts, of course, so that a greater abundance of meanings might be available to them.
R. Menahem does not deny this, who writes (in Hebrew), “The book of the law, in which there are many appearances (of meanings) should not be pointed.”
R. Bechai proclaims the same thing at greater length over Numbers 11:15 (“And if you treat me in this way”), where he thinks that the verb can be read as an imperative instead of as a participle, because some mystery must be indicated by that word. “Indeed the consonants,” he says, “without the vowel pointings, contain different and elaborate understandings, and for this reason we have the rule about not adding the vowel pointings to the book of the Law, because with them the words would only have one sense, but without them they give us many marvellous meanings.”
But we will discuss the different methods of the Cabbalistic interpreters at greater length later, in the chapter concerning allegories in particular. For this section on allegory in general, what we have mentioned should be enough.